torpor of despairing insanity, during which he receives the most cruel tidings with apathy, or replies to them with wild incoherence; and the heart flows forth at the close with its last burst of love, only to break in the vehemence of its emotion,--commencing with the tenderness of regret, swelling into choking grief, and at last, when the eye catches the tokens of mortality in the dead, snapping the chords of life in a paroxysm of agonised horror. Oh, thou wilt come no more; Never, never, never, never, never! --Pray you, undo this button: Thank you, Sir.-- Do you see this?--_Look on her--look_--HER LIPS! _Look there! Look there!_ The application here of the differences thus pointed out is easy enough. Fletcher either would not have chosen so bare a story, or he would have treated it in another guise. [Sidenote: Incidents of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ story] The incidents which constitute the story are neither many nor highly wrought: they are only the capture of the two knights,--their becoming enamoured of the lady,--the combat which was to decide their title to her,--and the death of Arcite after it. And no complexity of minor adventures is inserted to disturb the simplicity so presented. [Sidenote: wouldn't have suited Fletcher.] In all this there is nothing which Fletcher could have found sufficient to maintain that continuity and stretch of interest which he always thought necessary. [Sidenote: He'd have added to 'em.] He would have invented accessory circumstances, he would have produced new characters, or thrust the less important person[77:1]ages who now fill the stage, further into the foreground, and more constantly into action: the one simple and inartificial story which we have, possessing none of his mercurial activity of motion, and scarcely exciting a feeling of curiosity, would have been transformed into a complication of intrigues, amidst which the figures who occupy the centre of the piece as it stands, would have been only individuals sharing their importance with others, and scarcely allowed room enough to make their features at all distinguishable. [Sidenote: Shakspere's handling seen in certain scenes of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]